Speaker Profile: Leslie Harris

"I have focused my research efforts on exploring the history of pre-Civil War African Americans in the United States and their struggles to achieve freedom and racial equality. My work complicates the idea of a unified "black community" by examining how class and gender identities united and divided blacks' efforts to achieve political equality. I demonstrate that issues of class, gender, and sexuality were crucial both to those who tried to argue for African-American racial inferiority, and for attempts by African Americans to define political strategies and racial identities that would enable them to achieve full political citizenship in the United States." from Emory Faculty Profile